Dr. Dre’s ‘Compton’ Sells Almost 300,000 Copies In One Week

As expected, Dr. Dre’s first album in 16 years pushed some serious units in its first week. Compton, an iTunes exclusive, sold 295,000 equivalent album units, according to Billboard. Of that number, 276,000 are purely from sales. Compton should reach gold certification this year, assuming there’s no absurd drop-off next week.

Compton‘s first week numbersis the third-highest for hip-hop this year behind Drake‘s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (535,000 overall) and Kendrick Lamar‘s To Pimp a Butterfly (363,000). Drake is Team Apple, and Lamar is, too, by his affiliation with Dr. Dre. So Compton‘s numbers are a win for the west coast and Apple.

However, Compton didn’t sell enough to top the Billboard. Country singer Luke Bryan‘s Kill the Lights took the top spot with 345,000 equivalent units pushed. Country fans buy albums.

However, Straight Outta Compton, the movie Compton is tied into, has been reigning the box office this weekend. The $56 million it pulled this weekend succeeded expectations and destroyed its second closest competitor (Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation) by nearly $40 million. Fantastic Four, which was supposed to be doing Straight Outta Compton‘s numbers, pulled in a pitiful $8 million in North America.